Tactile systems, such as Braille, are widely used by visually impaired persons, including blind and low-vision persons, to enable them to touch read written text. Braille is a system of touch reading which employs raised dots evenly arranged in quadrangular letter spaces or cells. Braille cells are made up of a plurality of positions that are populated by the raised dots to provide characters (e.g., letters of the alphabet or numbers), while other positions are left blank. Each particular configuration of raised dots represents a letter of the alphabet, a numeral or other symbol.
Improvements and/or alternatives to Braille have been described over the years. Some of these improvements/alternatives are described in the following patents: U.S. Pat. No. 3,197,889, entitled “Method of Forming Letters and Numbers Readable by the Blind,” Micropoulou, issued Aug. 3, 1965; U.S. Pat. No. 3,363,339, entitled “Braille Cell Structure, Place, issued Jan. 16, 1968; U.S. Pat. No. 4,404,764, entitled”“Message Medium Having Corresponding Optical and Tactile Messages,” Wills, et al., issued Sep. 20, 1983; , and U.S. Pat. No. 4,737,108, entitled “Tactile Code for the Visually Impaired and Blind,” Chepaitis, issued Apr. 12, 1988, each of which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
The conventional Braille system requires a high-level of skill and is not as intuitive as desired. Additionally, it and alternative systems require significant cognitive resources.